Refusing 'friends' invitation

Hi,
This is something that always makes me a little uncomfortable. Might have been discussed before, but I'm probably not the only one with this question now.

How best to deal with people who, almost immediately upon first meeting you, will send you and invitation to be "friends"?
In my eyes, a "friend" is someone whom you want to send IMs without having to first search for them, or people whose coming and goings are actually of interest to you.
I think asking before offering 'friendship' is a good way to go because it gives the other person a chance to just hand you a calling card. I think older players have that pretty much sorted out.

But I am uncomfortable refusing a newbie's invitation, because I think that might hurt their feelings. What do you say to them in explanation? Or do you just accept and then get constant messages about who is coming on or going offline?
What message appears when someone turns down your invitation?

Accept the new friend and give it a day or two. Maybe this new friend is someone you would like to get to know. If not, remove from list.

I think when you declines it will say so.

Just leave the invite there and pretend it hasn't arrived yet
it goes when you log-off - if they haven't proved themselves wirthy by thenm you don't need it.

I've had a few 'friends' from people who never even walked up to me or talked to me - although its much rarer in the last 6 months.

Are the noobs getting more street savvy?

They get a disclaimer that I only "friend" people that I've actually gotten to know.

If they spam me with friends requests after that, they get muted.

The dialog is something along the lines of "blahblah has declined your friendship offer."

Occasionally, I get someone especially persistent, so I'll add them to get them to be quiet about it, then remove them from the list later.

For me personally, I really don't have too much of a problem with it. I prefer to keep my friends list as lean as possible, and only add those that I feel that I can get along with and is not someone who is just going to be hounding me for something constantly.

However from what I understand, this type of thing is far more of a problem for females. My partner gets friend requests everywhere she goes. She kinda feels like that she is being rude if she doesn't accept, but I've told her that if someone can't at least have a friendly conversation in open chat first, or in IM if the situation demands it, then most likely they will be more of a bother than anything else.

If someone sends me a friends invite out of the clear blue sky, I send them an IM politely explaining that I don't accept random friend requests from folks who haven't chatted with me for a while first and actually gotten to know me.

Sometimes someone I *am* chatting with sends a request a bit earlier than I think is warranted, but as long as they're not rude, I'll often accept to be polite. Then, if I don't see them online for a while, or if I do see them online but we don't talk for a while, I'll remove them. How long 'a while' is may vary. It's become longer since I became a gallery co-owner, since I want to be able to let as many people as possible know about gallery events.

I wish we could have two tiers of friends: one for the close inner circle and one for the acquaintances and business associates.

Has anyone else noticed that those friends you dropped have calling cards remain in your inventory still telling you of their online status? Presumably they do too. Very odd.

Just say NO!

i accept the friendship ... and usually delete it within a week if i don't see or talk to that avi again.

as for two tiers, there ARE calling cards. tho i have never received or given one. it's something no one seems to use.

if you delete someone from the friends' list, their calling card is still in your inventory. so you might consider those a friends B-list.

This is pretty much exactly how my policy has developed. There are times when I am comfortable saying, "I'm sorry, I'd rather get to know someone a little before becoming friends," and other situations where I just accept the friend request (i.e. if the person is a newbie) and then wait a week or so to see if I ever see the person again. I do occasionally prune my friends list, removing people whom I haven't seen or heard from since the day they were added.

Now that I run a cafe, I am a little less circumspect - I am less likely to turn them down when they come from visitors to my cafe, because I want people to think of my cafe as a friendly place and invite their other friends to come to it. (On the other hand, I'm easier to find because I am at the cafe much of my in-world time, so friending me isn't necessary to finding me again.)



I think calling cards are supposed to accomplish this and would be effective at doing so except that very few people use them, it seems.

True, and I generally don't delete calling cards. I've never looked up how one just gives a calling card, but since you automatically give one when accepting a friend request, it's a reasonable workaround to consider the calling cards folder the B-list.

I almost always say "Sorry, I never do the friends thing until I've gotten to know somebody better - nothing personal!"

99% of the time, people will laugh and say "that's cool" or some such. For the 1% that do get offended at that, well, just IMO, it's probably best we didn't do the friends thing anyway.

I used to take accept all friend requests, then delete them after a certain amount of time if i didn't develop into anything. Now, depending on the situation i either accept, offer a calling card or politely decline, explaining why before they get they rejection notice.

I prefer friendship offers over calling cards. That being said, I like to chat a while, getting to know someone, and get a feel for how they responds before I offer friendship. Of course if the conversation is loaded with negative garbage, I will not offer friendship or accept it either.

If friendship is being offered on my end, I will ASK before offering.
For those who will never learn proper etiquette (I am referring to griefers) I don’t feel bad at all by rejecting their offer, I may even give them a polite word or two like 'shove off'.

As far as accepting friendship from the occasional newbie, I usually accept right off the bat; if they turn out to be a griefer I can always revoke friendship and set them on ignore. If they become really persistent, I can always AR their ass.

So to answer your question, It really doesn’t hurt to accept a new person’s friendship right away, no need in offending them or upsetting them, giving them the wrong impression of SL.

/me sends Ricardo a friends request

apologies if this has been said already. i send the person an im telling them that as i just met you, and know nothing about you, i cannot accept your friend request at this time. then hit deny. although on rare occaisions i have accepted them for buisness purposes and they have turned into friends

My definition of a Friend is similar to yours. So, if someone offers me friendship right away, I almost always respond (in IM) with "Thank you, but I only accept friendships from people that I have known for a while". If I have been chatting with them a bit and expect that I won't mind future contact with them, but still too soon to want to call them a Friend yet, then I will sometimes add "I will be happy to exchange Calling Cards with you to make future contact a bit easier". There have been a few exceptions to that, but in those cases there were other circumstances that played into the decision.

When I offer friendship, I always IM and ask first - I just feel that is the courteous thing to do. However, I don't get upset if someone doesn't specifically ask about the friendship before offering. Some consider the offer to be the same as asking. So I simply use my normal criteria for acceptance or not.

If someone offers friendship and you decline, they get a message saying you have declined. Ditto for offering and accepting/declining Calling Cards. A side note - a calling card will always show whether or not you are online. The Friends list simply controls the other aspects - notification when you come and go, finding you on the map, modifying your objects.

If you accept a friendship and then later remove the person from your Friends list, they still have the Calling Card that they automatically got when you accepted the Friendship - hence the reason I no longer just accept random Friend requests and delete them later.

Oh that is just Golden!

Sure but we can't all compete for the friendliest guy in SL

When girls offer me friendship I simply say I don't accept friendship from girls I didn't share poseballs with. Male friendships I accept to delete them afterwards. Imagine how short my list is...

On a serious note: accepting and deleting after a week is the simplest: no explaining to do why you refuse, and who knows there is a wonderful person behind the offer. If not, deleting is easy enough

Greetings, Marcel

I love it!

i simply don`t accept invites from strangers and just decline them when getting them

if i get an invite from some one i know, but knowingly they`ll only talk to me when THEY need something, i decline it aswell

only accept it when i know those people might say hi atleast once in a couple of months or that will never need anything (need as in "need *** or "drama", favors are fine once in awhile as every one needs some at time

if you dont want them, decline.

because...

1: having too many friends in your friends list has been shown to slow down your logging-in time. a perfectly acceptable technical reason not to get a friends list too big.

2: accepting a friendship offer (or giving one) gives the person your calling card. even if you later want/need to remove them from your list (and this removes you from THEIR list), they can still find you and bug you via your calling card. there's no way to 'retract' giving someone your calling card.



i just had someone sad that i declined his friendship yesterday. i met him and we exchanged like 8 sentences at a store. i told him, dude, we'll probably never see each other again.

he said, but wont it be more likely if we're on friends lists?

i said, not in my experience.

really, in my experience, people toss out friend offers after talking for five minutes at some random spot you met.... then you never see/hear from them againt after you go your separate ways. you just end up with names clogging your friends list and calling cards from people that you have no idea who they are.


if they tell you its rude to decline friendship offers, tell them its rude to offer without asking first. its kinda like some guy/gal offering you his/her phone number and wanting yours after talking or five minutes in a bar. would YOU give it to them in that situation?

if you keep accepting friendship offers as, um, 'mercy friendships' that you delete as soon as the other party is offline.... they're just going to learn that tossing out these things is acceptable, and will start to think that people who don't accept them ARE rude.


just say NO!

I just tend to politely explain that I don't add people until I have talked to them, if it was an out of the blue request. If we've talked I accept it - tho inevitably I never hear from them again.

I wish you could choose who you saw come and go online and off - I would have a larger friends list if it didn't mean messing my inventory constantly. Plus, there are sometimes people I simply don't want to see coming and going anyway.

This can also be an excuse ... that your friends list causes distractions when trying to build etc so you keep it very small, "but here's my card".

I would love that option. Not ony do I want to control who gets notified when I come and go, but I would definitely like to also have some say in me getting notified about them. I want them as friends and I sometimes do want to know if they are online, but I do not always want the notices for everyone.

Exactly!

Wonder if there's a JIRA for it? Hmmm.